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George  Davidson 


Professor  of  Geography 
University  of  California 


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NATIONAL  RENOYATION: 


ITS    SOURCE,    ITS    CHANNELS,    AND 
ITS   RESULTS. 


WILLIAM  R./wn^AMi 


?^EW  YORK: 

ANSON    D.    F.    RANDOLPH, 

No.    683    B  RO  AD  W  A  T, 

1803. 


GIF 


MTIOML  EEiXOVATION: 


ITS    SOURCE,    ITS    CHANNELS,    AND 
ITS  RESULTS. 


WILLIAM  E.  WILLIAMS, 


NEW  YORK: 
ANSON  D.  F.  RANDOLPH 

No.    683    BROADWAY. 

1863. 


%\h  '§mnxst 


ON  THE  FIRST  SABBATH  MORNING  OF  THE  YEAR, 
4th  JANUARY,  1868, 

IS     PUBLISHED     BY    REQUEST. 


EDWAKD  O.   JENKINS, 

^Printer  anli  iSttrtotfiprr, 
No.  20  NoBTH  William  St. 


3k; 
v/ 


'^^  ^  -^-^■ 


NATIONAL   EENOVATION": 

ITS  SOOEOE,  ITS  OHAKirELS,  AHD  ITS  EESULTa 


'•  Until  the  Spirit  be  poured  upon  us  from  on  high,  and  the  wilder- 
ness BE  A  fruitful  FIELD,  AND  THE  FRUITFUL  FIELD  BE  COUNTED  FOR  A  FOR- 
EST.    Then  judgment  shall  dwell  in  the  wilderness,  and  righteousness 

REMAIN  IN  the  FRUITFUL  FIELD.  And  THE  WORK  OF  RIGHTEOUSNESS  SHALL  BE 
PEACE;  AND  THE  EFFECT  OF  RIGHTEOUSNESS  QUIETNESS  AND  ASSURANCE  FOR 
EVER." — ISAIAH  XXxii.  15-17. 

On  the  opening  Sabbath  of  a  new  year  it  is  not  only- 
natural,  my  friends,  but  it  is  almost  inevitable  that  we 
should  look  forward — it  may  be  with  eager  hope  or  it 
may  be  with  overmastering  solicitude — to  the  character 
of  the  history  which  that  year  is  to  write  for  ourselves, 
and  our  homes,  and  our  native  land.  Steering,  as  the 
ship  of  State  is,  amid  the  howling  tempest  and  boiling 
surges  of  war,  through  most  perilous  straits,  both  as  re- 
gards its  home  and  its  foreign  policy,  it  would  be  lack  of 
patriotism  and  sheer  hardness  of  heart  to  whistle  off,  in 
utter  levity,  the  memory  of  the  tremendous  emergencies 
and  responsibilities  that  envelop,  darken,  and  agitate  us. 
Yet  vast  as  is  the  State,  and  dread  as  is  the  crisis  of  the 
national  destiny,  the  soul  of  each  one  of  us  has  a  longer 
lease  of  being  than  any  empire,  merely  secular,  which 
the  earth  has  seen  or  is  ever  to  see.    And  through  the 


Mie8'?970 


4  NATIONAL  RENOVATION  : 

commingling  battle  of  Sin  and  of  Grace,  of  Temptation 
whose  maelstrom  sucks  the  keel  downward,  and  of  Re- 
demption, which  shoots  the  bark  heavenward,  each  child 
and  each  man  of  us  is,  whether  or  not  we  be  conscious 
of  it,  struggling  for  a  mightier  stake  than  empires  ever 
contested  on  the  field  of  battle.  Crowns  and  sceptres 
are  veriest  baubles  and  idle  pageantry  compared  with  the 
intrinsic  worth  of  a  human  soul.  Angels  and  devils  sur- 
vey with  profoundest  interest  the  steps  and  results  of 
your  spiritual  career.  The  realms  of  Christ  and  Abad- 
don sway,  so  to  speak,  to  and  fro  over  the  disputed  prize 
of  your  soul,  lightly  as  you  may  regard  it ;  and  habitually 
as  you  may  forget  the  fact  of  that  dread  arbitrament, 
which  settled  once  is  settled  irrevocably  and  forever. 
The  year  of  grace,  1863,  will,  beyond  all  question,  be  "  a 
year  of  the  right  hand  of  the  Most  High."  But  will  that 
right  hand  smite  us  down  with  its  mailed  gauntlet  of 
vengeance  to  depths  of  inconceivable  wretchedness  ;  or, 
lift  us  in  its  blessed  grasp  of  rescue  to  the  heights  of  the 
heavenly  glory,  and  the  secure  hold  of  the  victor's  palm- 
brancli  ? 

Religion  and  Patriotism  should,  my  beloved  hearers, 
alike  make  us  thoughtful,  as  we  place  in  uncertainty  our 
feet  over  the  tlireshold  of  a  new  year  which  may  bring 
to  us  so  much  of  blessing  beyond  all  estimation,  or  as 
much  of  woe,  incalculable  and  irreparable.  It  was  the  lot 
of  Isaiah  to  lift  up  the  voice  of  his  lierald  prophesying 
in  a  day  of  rebuke,  declension  and  blaspliemy.  The 
crimes  and  impiety  of  Ahaz  his  king,  interrupted  indeed 
by  the  reign  of  the  godly  Hezekiah,  but  resumed  and  ag- 
gravated by  tlie  next  successor  Manasseh, — ihe  tauntings 
and  cursings  of  Rabshakeh  and  the  war-trump  and  im- 
perial menaces  of  Sennacherib,  must,  all  in  their  turn, 
have  beaten  heavily  on  tlie  burdened  lieart  of  the  pro- 


ITS   SOURCE,   ITS   CHANNELS,   AND   ITS   RESULTS.  5 

phet.  But  witli  what  an  overmastering  gladness  does 
bis  soul  dart  through  the  lower  and  ominous  cloud-rack 
to  reach  the  upper  skies,  ever  serene  and  golden.  Let  us 
implore  the  aid  of  that  grace  which  he  so  steadily  pro- 
claimed, and  so  richly  and  sweetly  experienced,  in  order 
that  we  too  may  no  longer  be  "  of  doubtful  minds  f  but 
trust  and  fear  not,  with  the  Eternal  God  as  our  stay  and 
as  the  rock  of  our  salvation.  Bring  the  year  what  it 
may,  if  the  Lord,  its  Sovereign  Governor,  be  the  habita- 
tion of  our  souls,  its  worst  storms  shall  but  dash  us  on 
His  faithfulness,  and  waft  us  at  the  last  into  His  rest  and 
beatific  vision. 

The  Christians  of  many  a  remote  shore,  and  using 
many  various  dialects  of  the  earth's  divided  tongues,  have 
agreed  to  make  tliis  opening  week,  as  commenced  by  the 
present  Sabbath,  and  as  rounded  by  the  next  succeeding 
Sabbath,  a  season  of  special,  unremitted  and  unanimous 
intercession  for  the  descent  of  tlie  Spirit  of  God.  This, 
which  is  their  theme  of  prayer,  is  in  our  text  brought 
forward  by  Isaiah,  as  being  in  his  time,  and  for  all  after 
times,  the  basis  of  the  Church's  hope,  and  the  only  source 
of  true  and  lasting  renovation  for  any  people  and  for  the 
entire  race.  As  Ezekiel,  from  amongst  the  white  and 
disjointed  bones  of  the  Valley  of  vision,  seemingly  the 
spoils  of  some  neglected  and  unguarded  cemetery,  and  a 
spectacle  that  in  itself  preached  only  perplexity  and  des- 
pondency, was  bidden  to  look  up,  and  to  prophesy  for  the 
four  winds  of  Heaven — the  emblem  of  the  Omnipresent 
and  All-grasping  Spirit  of  God — to  come  down  and  shoot 
life  into  the  rattling  fragments ;  so  Isaiah,  before  him, 
bade  us  raise  our  eyes  heavenwards,  amid  all  scenes  of 
gloom  and  toil,  in  our  expectation  of  aid  only  from  God's 
good  Spirit,  and  in  our  passionate,  importunate  entreaties 
for  its  quickening  descent. 


6  NATIONAL  RENOVATION  : 

With  the  heart  earnestly  uplifted,  then,  to  Him  who  is 
the  heart-searching  and  the  heart-changing  Jehovah,  let 
us  ponder,  in  the  statements  of  our  text 

I.  The  SOURCE  of  national  and  general  renovation — 
"  Until  the  Spirit  be  poured  upon  us  from  on  high  ;'' 

II.  The  CHANNELS  of  such  renewals  of  good  to  the  age, 
the  land  and  the  race — "  And  the  wilderness  be  a  fruitful 
field,  and  the  fruitful  field  be  counted  for  a  forest.  Then 
judgment  shall  dwell  in  the  wilderness,  and  righteousness 
remain  in  the  fruitful  field  f 

III.  The  RESULTS  of  such  moral  and  social  renovation 
— "  And  the  work  of  righteousness  shall  be  peace,  and 
the  effect  of  righteousness  quietness  and  assurance  for- 


A  Source,  supernal  and  Divine ;  Channels,  of  revolu- 
tionary change  on  the  earth ;  and  the  Results,  peaceful 
and  permanent,  are  presented  by  the  book  of  God  as 
affording  sufficient  grounds  of  consolation  and  hope  for 
our  race  in  each  darker  crisis  of  history. 

As  travellers  climb  the  long  staircases  of  some  church 
spire  to  scan  the  avenues  and  precincts  of  some  great 
strange  city,  and  thus  learn  its  shape  and  chief  thorough- 
fares :  or,  ascend  by  painful  clamberings  some  steep  moun- 
tain-top to  look  off  from  its  jagged  pinnacles,  and  judge 
the  better  of  the  country  they  are  traversing — even  so  is 
it  by  the  help  of  ascending  in  soul  on  high,  that  we  can 
aright  calculate  either  the  earth's  present  condition,  or 
its  prospects  of  coming  relief. 

When  the  Temple,  in  days  after  those  of  Isaiah,  lay  in 
desecrated  ruin,  and  the  walls  and  homes  of  Jerusalem 


ITS   SOURCE,   ITS   CHANNELS,   AND  ITS   RESULTS.  7 

strewed  now  with  their  broken  wreck,  the  desolate  heap 
that  had  been  once  a  beautiful  and  sacred  metropolis, 
"  the  joy  of  the  whole  earth,''  the  hopes  of  the  pious  He- 
brew, for  the  restoration  of  his  city  and  people,  lay  not 
so  much  in  any  outer  and  secular  alliance,  in  the  rank  of 
Mordecai,  or  the  sweet  attractiveness  of  Esther,  or  the 
promotion  of  a  Nehemiah,  or  the  wide  sway  of  a  Daniel, 
as  it  did  in  the  prophecies  of  heaven's  own  sending,  and 
in  the  prayers  of  saints  as  pleading  those  prophecies,  and 
as  besieging,  whilst  thus  sustained  by  the  warrants  of 
God's  own  word,  the  throne  of  His  heavenly  grace.  And 
so,  when  Christ,  after  telling  his  apostles  of  the  world's 
hatred,  and  of  the  wide  range  of  their  own  work  in  all 
the  coasts  and  through  all  the  tribes  of  tliat  world,  would 
cheer  and  arm  them  for  the  task,  he  assured  them  of 
the  presence  of  this  same  Spirit,  the  Comforter,  as  fur- 
nishing the  pledge  of  their  ultimate  and  irresistible  tri- 
umph. They  were  to  wait  at  Jerusalem  for  that  Spirit's 
coming  ;  and  this  Invisible  but  Invincible  Helper  would 
secure  the  evangelization  of  the  race.  Thus  was  it  true 
in  all  times,  not  only  in  the  day  of  Pentecost,  but  in  the 
ages  before  it,  as  in  tlie  ages  since  succeeding  and  long 
after  it,  that  the  sources  of  earth's  hope  were  not  to  be 
dug  out  of  her  own  mines,  or  minted  and  refined  out  of 
her  own  ores.  Its  health  and  recovery  was  possible,  only 
as  it  should  be  in  origin,  supernal  and  eternal  and  Divine. 
From  "  on  high  "  did  it  come  j  and  from  "  on  high"  were 
they  to  implore  its  descent.  Zion  was  to  look  evermore 
"  to  the  hills  whence  " — and  whence  only — "  cometh  her 
help." 

That  Spirit's  outpouring  was  experienced  after  all 
Ahaz's  fearful  temerity  of  impiety,  in  the  revival  of  re- 
ligion under  Hezekiah  ;  and  after  Manasseh's  more  guilty 
relapse,  in  his  conversion  and  the  early  piety  of  Josiah — 


8  NATIONAL  renovation: 

yet  again,  in  the  days,  tasks  and  achievements  of  Nehe- 
miah,  Ezra,  Zerubbabel  and  Joshua  the  son  of  Josedech, 
as  returning  from  the  Captivity  to  rebuild  Jerusalem — 
still  more  largely  in  the  work  of  preparation  under  John 
the  Baptist  and  of  evangelization  by  our  Lord  and  His 
Apostles — then,  anew,  in  quick  sequence  after  His  ascen- 
sion by  the  glorious  scenes  of  Pentecost.  So,  in  later 
ages  of  the  Christian  Church,  the  conversion  of  the  Pa- 
gan Roman  Empire  to  Christianity,  and  then  of  the  bar- 
barian hordes  who  became  the  invaders  of  that  Empire 
— then  the  Reformation  under  Luther  and  Calvin  and 
their  compeers — the  days,  then,  of  the  British  Puritans 
and  of  the  Scottish  Covenanters — then,  the  era  of  Metho- 
dism and  of  Modern  Missions, — and  all  the  revivals  of 
religious  feeling  and  activity  in  our  fathers'  days  and  in 
our  own,  make  up,  my  hearers,  but  instalments  of  this 
great  effusion  of  celestial  energy, — the  Spirit's  outpour- 
ing here  predicted. 

Surely,  that  Creator  Spirit,  who  brooded  over  the 
emptiness  and  disorder  of  the  old  Chaos,  and  evoked  the 
order,  variety,  light,  beauty,  and  permanence  of  the  Cre- 
ation, is  fully  adequate  to  the  work  of  the  Second  Cre- 
ation, as  the  Repairer  of  our  moral  ruin  in  virtue  of 
Christ's  treaty  of  the  Atonement.  To  Nicodemus  Christ 
preached  the  necessity  of  this  Spirit's  influence  for  that 
new  birth  without  which  Heaven  cannot  be  entered : 
as  He  afterwards  bade  His  Apostles  tarry  at  Jerusalem 
until  endowed  with  fresh  power  from  on  high  by  this 
Spirit,  animating  and  equipping  them  for  their  great  trust 
of  itinerating  and  evangelizing  the  world. 

And  as  it  is  not  man's  prerogative  to  wield  at  his  will 
tliese  the  resources  of  tlie  skies  and  the  energies  of  tho 
Godhead,  it  is  quite  as  presumptuous  for  man  to  propose, 
in  his  terrene  might,  to  check,  to  lock  and  to  bar  these 


overflowings  of  the  Grace  and  Sovereignty  of  Almighty 
God.  "  To  bind  the  sweet  influences  of  the  Pleiades  " 
might  be  much  more  easily  effected  by  man's  five  fingers, 
than  that  his  puny  hand  should  bolt  the  windows  of 
Heaven,  stay  the  vials  of  Pentecost,  and  dictate  to  the 
Christ,  the  Heir  and  Lord  of  all  earth's  history,  within 
what  secular  and  human  barriers  He  shall  be  permitted 
to  spread  His  truth  and  rule  and  mould  the  hearts  of  His 
people.  Xerxes  assaying  to  put  fetters  on  the  Hellespont, 
and  Canute  chiding  the  tide  for  its  rising,  were  men 
soberly  and  effectively  employed,  in  comparison  with  the 
modern  schemers  and  dreamers  who  arrogate  to  curb  the 
Law  and  Spirit  of  the  Omnipotent  and  Eternal  One,  in 
their  free  career  from  "  on  high,"  over  a  world  created 
dependent  on  its  Maker,  and  over  a  race  conscience- 
bound  and  death-driven  towards  the  Last  Judgment. 

However  sadly,  therefore,  at  times,  some  foreboding 
hearts  here  may  regard  the  era  of  turmoil  and  political 
conflict,  and  martial  carnage,  and  financial  embarrassment, 
which  now  lowers  over  us  and  around  us  as  a  people, 
there  is  found  in  God's  gracious  Spirit  the  Source  of  all 
relief  needed,  competent  to  every  emergency  of  the 
world's  darkest  era,  and  adequate  to  realize  and  to  sur- 
pass the  largest  dreams  of  hope.  Are  you  a  parent, 
whose  soul  grows  heavy  at  forecasting  the  possible  desti- 
nies of  your  children?  Do  you  inquire,  passionately, 
whether  Anarchy  or  Despotism,  or  the  bitter,  unrelenting, 
internecine  strifes  of  two  contending  Governments,  di- 
viding between  them  our  old  territory  as  a  nation,  with 
costly  armdments,  uncertain  boundaries,  ruinous  imposts, 
and  continuous  bickerings,  are  the  appointed  lot  of  your 
sons  and  daughters  ?  Do  you  ask,  at  times.  Is  then  the 
perjured  and  wily  usurper  to  whom  France,  craftily  flat- 
tered by  him  in  her  love  of  splendor,  bows  down  the 
1* 


10  NATIONAL  RENOVATION  . 

pliant  neck,  and  who  talks  of  asserting  the  rights  of 
the  Latin  race  over  the  world — to  become,  by  the  well- 
timed  intervention  growing  into  invasion,  the  patron  and 
arbiter  of  our  freedom,  religious  and  political?  And 
this,  when  so  many  of  us  the  children  of  the  Pilgrims, 
and  when  so  many,  others  of  us,  as  students  of  the  old 
Puritan  theology,  have  been  wont  to  read  in  that  very 
name — the  Latin,  thus  brandished  over  us,  the  mysterious 
six  hundred  threescore  and  six  of  the  Apocalypse, — an 
interpretation  put  upon  it  so  far  back  as  the  days  of 
Irenagus,  living  in  the  very  century  next  after  that  of  the 
giving  of  the  Apocalypse — the  Latin,  thus  made  the 
name  of  tlie  Beast  that  fought  against  God  and  that 
would  trample  in  ashes  and  gore  Christ's  truth  and 
Church.  Shall  imperial  and  Papal  despotism^  wielding 
a  name  of  such  scriptural  ominousness,  win  or  daunt  into 
obsequiousness,  the  children  of  the  men  whose  fathers 
fed  the  fires  of  Smithfield  with  their  own  flesh  as  fearless 
martyrs,  endured  in  one  land,  the  Dragonades  of  the 
crowned  Bourbon,  or,  in  another  land,  warred  on,  de- 
throned and  belieaded  the  crowned  Stuarts ;  defied  in 
Scotland  the  Dalziels  and  the  Claverhouses,  and  in  Hol- 
land the  Alvas,  and  have  come  out  of  this  varied  ances- 
tral  experience  with  no  especial  links,  binding  us  either 
by  fear  or  by  love  to  the  Latin  name  ? 

Against  all  these  needless  or  warranted  alarms  there 
remains  one  sure  and  sufficient  source  of  defence,  the 
Spirit  of  God,  that,  unexhausted  in  its  powers,  and  bound- 
less in  its  benignity,  vaster  than  our  deepest  necessities, 
and  richer  than  our  wildest  anticipations,  is  able  to  shake 
the  nations,  and  smite  with  the  energy  that  shattered  the 
old  Paganism  of  imperial  Rome  all  forms  of  nascent  and 
resurgent  Paganism  in  modern  Christendom. 

The  Holy  Ghost  can  deluge  the  globe  with  light,  and 


ITS  SOURCE,   ITS   CHANNELS,   AND   ITS   RESULTS.        11 

with  life  and  with  love  from  the  plenitude  of  His  re- 
sources, and  the  invincibility  of  His  searching  and 
pervasive  energies.  What  social  error  or  evil — what 
political  combination — what  power  of  faction,  delusion 
or  obduracy  can  stand  up  against  the  Omnipotent,  or 
outwatch  and  outwit  the  Omniscient  Spirit  of  God,  if 
His  Sovereignty  once  move  forth  ?  But  this  Spirit  has 
placed  His  influences,  so  to  speak,  before  us  under  the 
condition  and  requirement  of  instant,  united  and  con- 
tinued supplication.  He  with  whom  is  this  all-sufficing 
and  all-commanding  "  residue  of  the  Spirit,"  waits  "  to  be 
enquired  of."  All  His  past  gifts  have  not  drained  the 
reservoir  or  trenched  on  the  treasure-heap.  He  bids  us 
ask  assured  that  we  are  to  receive,  and  to  knock  impor- 
tunately at  the  door  even  when  seemingly  barred,  until 
it  be  opened.  His  choicest  pledge  of  favor  is  the  Spirit 
of  grace  and  supplication.  And  as  a  praying  Church 
opened  the  fetters  and  prison  doors  of  Peter,  whilst  all 
Jerusalem  waited  for  the  victim,  and  Herod's  soldiers, 
chained  bodily  to  the  prisoner,  seemed  to  assure  his  fate, 
so  now  the  Hearer  of  Prayer  but  awaits  new  and  heartier 
appeals  from  our  globe  to  call  forth  new  wonders,  that 
as  they  come  gushing  downward  from  His  throne  shall 
surprise  and  disappoint  the  nations  yet,  as  of  old,  in  their 
inveterate  delusion,  banded  against  His  King  in  Zion. 
He  awakens  prayer ;  He  directs  and  inspires  prayer  ;  He 
responds  to,  crowns  and  surpasses  the  requests  of  prayer  : 
and  as  of  old  reiterates  His  gracious  challenge  to  the 
Church,  "  Concerning  the  work  of  My  hands  command 
ye  Me." 

II.  But  what  are  the  channels  selected  by  this 
Mighty  Worker  in  shaping  the  affairs  and  in  controlling 
the  hearts  of  the  nations  ?    They  are  not  always  in  the 


12  NATIONAL  RENOVATION: 

line  of  established  human  precedents  ;  nor  do  these  floods 
always  respect  the  dykes  or  follow  the  channels  of  secu- 
lar interests  and  usages  and  prejudices.  The  strangest 
changes,  perplexing  and  appalling  human  leaders,  are 
often  wrought  by  His  Providence  outwardly ;  and  by  His 
direct,  internal  influence  also  in  the  hearts  and  moral 
state  of  men.  These  changes  can  alter  unexpectedly  the 
whole  face  of  a  land  making,  in  the  inspired  language  of 
our  prophecy,  the  wilderness  into  a  fruitful  field,  and 
causing  the  fruitful  field,  in  comparison  with  its  new 
counterpart,  to  be  accounted  as  a  forest.  This  was  illus- 
trated when  out  of  the  imperial  household  that  had  ab- 
sorbed Esther,  and  out  of  the  banqueting  chamber  of 
despotism  once  promising  only  riot  and  violence,  and  out 
of  the  very  feast  to  which  had  been  invited  as  a  honored 
guest  Haman,  the  sworn  enemy  of  the  Jews,  there  issued 
the  sentence  that  swung  that  persecutor  from  his  own 
gibbet ;  soon  to  be  followed  by  the  decree  that  bade 
the  Jews  stand  in  each  city  of  the  empire  in  their  own 
defence.  An  earlier  edict  had  sold  them  to  the  slaugh- 
ter. The  laws  of  the  Modes  and  the  Persians  did  not 
allow  the  aspect  of  regal  fallibility  and  mutability,  which 
would  be  presented  if  a  decree  once  made  should  ever  be 
rescinded.  But  it  might  be  counterpoised.  And  so  the 
older  judgment  of  general  massacre  for  the  Hebrew  race, 
left  constitutionally  unrepealed,  there  came  as  its  sup- 
plement the  second  decree  summoning  the  race  thus 
sealed  for  death  to  assume  the  sword  in  general  self- 
defence.  The  Jew  did  not  wait  to  debate  the  question, 
on  general  principles,  whether  of  right  it  were  not  bet- 
ter to  exscind  the  old  rule  of  immutability  and  infallibil- 
ity. Practically,  freedom  was  set  before  the  Jewish 
patriot ;  and  in  the  name  of  liis  God  he  accepted  and 
acliieved  the  boon  thus  placed  within  his  reach. 


ITS  SOURCE,   ITS   CHANNELS,   AND   ITS   RESULTS.        13 

These  Avide  and  sudden  changes,  which  it  is  the  prero- 
gative of  God's  Spirit  and  Providence  to  effect,  were 
illustrated  still  more  signally  when  the  greater  light 
of  the  gospel  dispensation,  as  compared  with  the  shadows 
of  the  Jewish  Levitical  economy,  made  the  wilderness 
of  the  Gentile  world  more  acquainted  with  the  great 
truths  of  religion,  and  more  profusely  adorned  with  the 
real  fruits  of  holiness  than  the  Jewish  people  had  been  ; 
so  that  their  fruitful  field  seemed  in  comparison  a  forest, 
and  so  that,  in  the  principle  of  the  Divine  government 
so  peremptorily  stated  by  the  Messiah,  its  Administrator, 
the  last  became  first  and  the  first  were  made  the  last. 
But  was  all  this  spiritual  and  celestial  bestowment,  how- 
ever noiseless  its  downward  lapse,  without  wars  and 
rumors  of  wars,  as  overspreading  the  earth  ?  Came 
there  not  overthrow  and  exile,  and  bereavement,  and 
persecution,  and  most  relentless  martyrdoms  ?  These 
must  be  even  in  the  van  and  in  the  train  of  the  Prince 
of  Peace.  God's  plough  and  harrow  went  tearing  the 
sod  as  God's  hand  rained  the  harvest-seed  of  His  king- 
dom. 

In  the  Church  and  in  the  world,  the  Most  High,  who 
is  wondrous  in  working,  can  yoke  the  stormiest  of  instru- 
mentalities into  the  service  of  His  own  benignant  cause. 
Look  at  Stephen,  the  martyr.  How  was  his  character, 
in  all  the  Christian  graces  that  illustrated  it,  and  that 
made  his  removal  so  great  a  cause  of  lamentation  to 
devout  men,  a  beautiful  realization  of  the  benediction  of 
Isaac  on  his  son  :  fragrant  is  holiness,  "  the  smell  of  a 
field  blessed  of  the  Lord."  Yet  great  as  was  the  fertile 
promise  of  that  field,  even  it  might  be  counted  a  forest 
compared  with  the  higher  spiritual  attainments  and  the 
wider  spiritual  achievements  of  Saul  of  Tarsus  ;  whom 
yet  that  Almighty  Spirit  found  a  very  thicket  and  forest 


14  NATIONAL  EENOVATION: 

of  thorns,  briars  and  poison-weeds,  but  whom  the  Spirit 
uf  God  converted  into  a  very  Eden  of  the  Lord's  favor 
and  presence.     Such  is  the  Lord's  potent  "  husbandry." 

The  Modern  Missions  of  the  Christian  Church  that 
have  carried  the  Bible  into  so  many  tribes  on  the  eastern 
continent  and  in  the  islands  of  the  southern  seas,  moved 
in  the  train  of  the  terrific  wars  of  the  great  French 
Revolution.  Mirabeau  and  Robespierre  and  Danton 
knew  nought  of  Carey  and  Martyn ;  but  the  French  anar- 
chists leavened  in  God's  Providence  our  race  for  the  great 
social  changes  which  invited  and  welcomed  these  mis- 
sionary outgoings.  When  the  carnival  of  Terror  and 
Blood  trampled  over  the  surface  of  France  till  it  was  a 
field  of  mire  and  gore,  the  God  of  the  centuries  was 
leading  on,  by  invisible  bands,  the  blessed  troops  of  the 
Sunday-School  Teacher,  the  Tract  Distributor,  the  Home 
Evangelist,  the  Foreign  Missionary,  and  the  Bible  Trans- 
lator. And  these  moral,  disturbing  forces  of  the  gospel 
that  God  sees  fit  to  send  forth,  in  the  company  or  in  the 
train  of  great  secular  convulsions,  are  by  the  hasty  rea- 
soners  of  the  world  most  unjustly  held  responsible  for 
the  social  convulsions  which  man's  wickedness  has  really 
extorted  from  Divine  Justice — convulsions  which  these 
moral  reformers  do  beyond  all  other  classes  the  most  to 
lighten,  to  terminate  and  to  heal.  Sidney  Smith,  in  rude 
scoffings  which  it  would  have  been  worth  the  sacrifice  of 
half  his  literary  honors  could  he  have  recalled  and  can- 
celled, sneered  at  the  early  Indian  Missions  of  our 
churches  as  the  work  of  "  consecrated  cobblers  ;"  and 
predicted,  as  the  result  of  their  continuance,  and  of  the 
failure  of  the  British  Government  to  suppress  them  by 
the  strong  hand  of  power,  the  murderous  overthrow  of 
British  dominion  in  the  East — the  "  cutting,"  to  use  his 
sinewy  English,  "  of  every  Englishman's  throat  in  the 


ITS   SOURCE,   ITS   CHANNELS,   AND   ITS   RESULTS.         15 

fiast."  How  did  God  put  scorn  on  the  scoffer  and  honor 
on  his  maligned  servants,  when  out  of  the  influence  and 
religious  trainings  of  that  very  Serampore  thus  denounced 
and  thus  derided,  He  brought  a  Havelock,  wedded  to 
a  daughter  of  that  missionary  colony,  himself,  in  the 
language  of  Sir  Henry  Hardinge,  "  Every  inch  a  soldier 
and  every  inch  a  Christian  ;"  and  sent  him,  in  the  hour 
of  sorest  peril  to  the  eastern  dominion  of  England,  to 
be  in  his  heroic  march  to  Lucknow,  one  eminent  instru- 
ment under  God  of  savimi"  to  the  British  Crown  her  vast 
Indian  Empire. 

Repentance  it  is  that  sets  us  in  the  way  of  God's  tes- 
timonies, and  brings  around  a  people  His  potent  and 
invincible  benediction.  And  trials  and  battles  and  re- 
volutions often  are  God's  chosen  enginery  to  induce  and 
precipitate  repentance.  So  Manasseh,  caught  among 
thorns,  remembered  his  sins,  and  sought  the  forgotten 
God  of  his  fathers.  Then  and  thus  "judgment  dwells 
in  the  wilderness."  In  out  of  the  way  avenues,  there  is 
seen  starting  up  some  mighty  witness  for  forgotten  duty 
and  neglected  truth,  the  echo  of  an  awakening  national 
conscience,  or  the  precursor  of  an  overwhelming  national 
judgment.  It  is  here  a  John  the  Baptist,  clad  in  camels' 
hair,  and  preaching  in  the  wilderness  of  Judah  to  silken 
citizens  and  courtiers,  the  stern  realities  of  Judgment 
and  Eternity.  It  is  there  a  poor  miner's  son,  Luther,  study- 
ing the  Scriptures  in  his  monastery  ;  or  thinking  on  the 
true  way  of  salvation  as  he  travels  on  his  knees  at  Rome 
up  the  stairs  of  Pilate's  palace  ;  or  translating  the  Bible 
in  his  Patmos  as  he  called  it,  the  desert  refuge  of  the 
Castle  of  Wartburg.  So  Wesley  and  Whitfield,  poor 
students  in  the  halls  of  Oxford  ;  so  a  Brainerd,  expelled 
wrongfully  from  his  college  in  New  Haven  ;  so  a  Carey 
fighting  poverty,  and  in  a  country  school  pondering  sadly 


16  NATIONAL  RENOVATION  : 

the  globe's  moral  destitutions  and  the  Redeemer's  world- 
wide charge  ;  are  they  not  all  but  modern  specimens  of 
this  wonted  mode  of  Heaven's  working,  by  the  things 
obscure,  overlooked,  or  when  looked  upon  by  man's  eyes, 
judged  pitiably  helpless  and  inadequate,  subverting  and 
counter-working  those  whose  power  seemed  to  man's 
settled  judgment  unassailable  ; — "  by  the  things  that  are 
not  bringing  to  nought  the  things  that  are."  But  all 
this  new  development  of  good  in  unexpected  regions  and 
from  uncounted  allies,  does  not  destroy  the  existing  good 
in  the  churches.  "  Righteousness  remains  in  the  fruitful 
field."  Truth  and  holiness,  where  already  found,  are  not 
extinguished,  although  for  the  time  they  may  seem 
eclipsed  by  these  new  and  unexpected  accessions  from 
quarters  where  the  Zion  of  God  had  hoped  for  no  helpers. 
"And  the  work  of  righteousness  shall  be  peace."  Now 
here  God  plainly,  and  yet  how  kindly  and  with  what  an 
incisive  gentleness,  reprehends  man's  habitual  delusions. 
For  man  instinctively  and  universally  and  persistently 
yearns  after  "  peace."  In  his  worst  riot  and  excess, 
when  belching  out  his  crude  brutalities  and  blasphemy, 
man,  however  revolting  against  Truth  and  Heaven,  yet 
sighs  for  peace.  A  Dives  looks  for  it  in  sumptuous  liv- 
ing. The  Rich  Fool  of  Christ's  parable  looked  for  it  in 
the  widened  barns  and  garnered  harvests.  The  drunk- 
ard hopes  to  see  it  at  the  bottom  of  his  drained  bowl ; 
•and  the  Sabbath-breaker  to  sift  it  out  of  his  sliivered 
fragments  of  the  dishonored  day  of  God  ;  and  even  the 
poor  prodigal  dreams  of  it  in  a  larger  dole  of  the  swine's 
husks.  Byron,  in  his  stormy  life  of  passion  and  self-indul- 
gence, speaks  of  his  being  most  deeply  touched  with  the 
Italian  grave-stone,  where  the  deceased  bade  the  traveller 
"  pray  for  peace  "  to  the  buried  sleeper.  He  had  fame, 
and  genius,  and  wealth,  and  rank,  and  pleasure  ;   but 


ITS   SOURCE,   ITS   CHANNELS,   AND   ITS   RESULTS.         17 

peace  lie  had  not.  Our  God  has  made  Righteousness 
the  u-a,y  to  Peace.  Repentance,  a  return  to  righteous- 
ness, is  the  indispensable  prerequisite  to  the  Kingdom 
of  Heaven,  to  acceptance  and  to  peace  with  our  Maker 
and  Judge.  So  in  the  Psalms,  Righteousness  and  Peace 
are  seen  to  kiss  each  other.  They  greet  thus  each  other 
for  an  eternal  alliance,  inseparable  as  the  sunbeam's 
light  and  the  sunbeam's  heat.  But  man  would  often,  in 
the  arrangements  of  his  mistaken  and  fatal  policy,  make 
the  greeting  of  the  two  powers  like  Orpah's  kiss  of 
Naomi,  a  farewell  salutation,  in  which  Peace  lifts  up  its 
voice  of  wailing  at  the  impending  banishment,  and  takes 
leave  for  ever  of  Righteousness  ;  as  if  that  Righteous- 
ness were  too  costly,  too  troublesome,  too  heavy  in  its 
taxation,  and  too  laborious  in  its  undertakings,  to  be  re- 
tained any  longer  in  our  vicinity  and  to  be  tolerated  as  of 
our  acquaintance.  But  God  allows  no  such  unnatural  dis- 
junction. He  puts  the  two  together,  not  as  exchanging 
salutations  for  an  eternal  parting,  like  Orpah  quitting 
Naomi  to  return  to  her  idols  ;  but  as  Ruth  and  Naomi 
knit  in  an  indissoluble  sisterhood  ;  one  life,  one  grave, 
and  one  God,  for  this  world  and  for  all  worlds. 

And  it  is  even  thus  with  the  nation  as  well  as  with 
the  individual.  A  people  must  do  Right  if  they  expect 
God's  blessing  of  true  and  enduring  Peace.  Hear 
again  the  edict  of  the  skies  :  "The  work  of  righteous- 
ness shall  be  peace."  Listen  to  the  short-sighted  and 
self-confident  schemes  of  the  men  of  expediency.  They 
say.  Give  us,  in  any  way  and  at  any  cost  of  principle, 
and  at  any  surrender  of  conscience  and  duty — peace. 
Let  us  plaster  with  the  tears  and  blood  of  the  slave  the 
altar  of  our  national  reunion  ;  and  make  all  slab  and 
smooth.  But  Heaven  denounces  the  building  with  such 
untempered  mortar  that  Justice  has  not  weighed,  com- 


18  NATIONAL  renovation: 

pounded  and  attempered.  It  is  but  to  build  what  Scrip- 
ture calls  "  the  breach  swelling  out  in  a  high  wall,"  that 
bulges  and  nods  to  a  speedy  overthrow.  It  ts  rearing  a 
habitation  that,  with  the  stone  out  of  the  wall  and  the 
beam  out  of  the  timber,  crying  out  against  the  wrong  of 
its  architects,  invites  Revolution  to  make  it  the  trap  and 
grave  of  its  trusting  inmates. 

In  the  light  of  these  proclaimed  principles  of  the 
Divine  Government,  we  may  look  through  all  our  anxie- 
ties and  bitter  bereavements,  hopefully  on  the  great  meas- 
ure of  Emancipation,  which  as  a  military  act,  the  Presi- 
dent may,  as  we  believe  under  the  Constitution,  right- 
fully adopt.  The  Providence  of  God  has  shut  him  up 
to  it.  If  we  are  required  by  the  Judge  on  high, 
now  and  evermore  the  Arbiter  of  all  national  destiny, 
to  do  to  another  as  we  would  have  another  do  unto  us, 
can  we  with  this  as  the  law  of  righteousness,  fail  to  re- 
joice even  over  the  terrible  trials,  which  have  made  such 
act  of  righteous  dealing,  now  both  constitutionally  pos- 
sible and  politically  expedient  ?  Do  we  anticipate  or 
desire  the  excesses  of  servile  revolt  ?  God  forbid  I 
But  the  very  presence  of  two  contending  armies.  North- 
ern and  Southern,  will  serve  as  an  armed  police  to  re- 
strain such  excesses,  were  they  otherwise  probable.  They 
would  be  far  more  likely  to  occur  in  the  desperate  out- 
break of  wild  uprisings  as  consequent  upon  a  hollow 
peace,  and  upon  the  disbandment  of  the  existing  camps. 

The  grand  difficulty  will  be  the  gradual  elevation  and 
education  of  these  enfranchised  beings,  for  the  due  and 
safe  use  of  their  newly  won  freedom.  But  righteousness 
has  God's  help  and  God's  especial  patronage  and  protec- 
tion. And  the  British  West  India  Islands,  whatever  may 
in  some  have  been  the  diminutions  of  commercial  ex- 
port, have  certainly,  as  to  the  social  condition  of  the 


ITS   SOURCE,   ITS   CHANNELS,   AND   ITS  RESULTS.        19 

peasantry,  disproved  the  gloomy  vaticinations  of  those 
opposed  to  emancipation.  And  we  think  that  the  fullest 
comparison  of  the  testimonies  of  those  most  closely, 
calmly,  and  thoroughly  observing  the  field,  leaves  an  un- 
impeachable and  overwhelming  result,  in  favor  of  the 
liberated  tenantry  as  to  industry,  morals,  domestic  order, 
and  personal  happiness  and  thrift. 

But  some  may  say :  In  our  land  at  least  give  us 
peace — in  any  mode,  at  any  price.  But  who  shall  give 
us  peace  ?  It  would  be  perilously  to  reckon  without  that 
Divine  and  Sovereign  Host,  on  whose  earth  we,  and  our 
fathers  before  us,  are  and  have  been  but  sojourners  and 
tenants  on  sufferance,  if  we  fail  to,  consult  in  planning  a 
sure  and  strong  peace,  those  conditions  of  right  and 
equity,  on  which  He  stipulates  as  conditions,  that  under 
His  government  must  precede  and  underlie  a  national 
peace  of  firm  structure  and  texture.  And  what  is  peace 
under  the  light  of  God's  startling  Providences  and  flash- 
ing Scriptures  ?  Peace  is  not  the  triumph  of  faction  at 
the  expense  and  by  the  sacrifice  of  principle.  It  is  not 
submission  to  the  bludgeon  as  the  law  for  our  senators  ; 
and  acceptance  of  secession  at  will  as  being  henceforth 
the  recognised  law  of  disintegration  for  the  nation,  for 
its  several  states  and  for  its  distinct  neighbourhoods.  It 
is  not  the  installation,  as  the  reward  of  a  traitorous  and 
sanguinary  revolt,  of  universal  serfdom  for  the  entire 
land.  That  treaty  brings  with  it  no  promise  of  Heaven's 
benison  for  the  country  that  should  crawl  into  so  base 
and  cruel  a  refuge.  This  is  not  peace,  for  it  sacrifices 
both  Liberty  and  Righteousness.  Man  is  too  readily 
inclined  to  think  of  gain  and  luxury  and  of  the  silencing 
of  the  weak  and  the  many  under  the  violence  and  selfish- 
ness of  the  few,  as  if,  these  once  attained,  peace  followed. 
In  the  terse  phrase  of  the  old  Roman,  men  ma)^  make 


20  NATIONAL  RENOVATION  : 

Desolation  and  call  it  Peace.  But  such  silence  of  Moral 
Desolation,  such  repose  of  Obdi^racy,  forgetting  Judg- 
ment, is  but  the  ominous  lull  that  heralds  the  earthquake. 
The  old  invocation  of  the  Psalmist  has  been  voicelessly 
uplifted  and  fearfully  answered  hundreds  of  times  in  the 
history  of  the  race :  "  It  is  time  for  Thee  to  work,  for 
men  have  made  void  Thy  law."  All  human  arrange- 
ments, in  a  land  irradiated  with  the  light  of  revelation, 
and  all  glowing  under  the  monitions  of  God's  judgments — 
all  human  arrangements,  that  in  such  scenes  and  times, 
make  promise  of  relief  must  make  endeavors  at  righteous- 
ness. Unrighteousness  cannot  make  peace :  for  God  is 
at  war  with  it.  And  when  God  wars,  the  Universe  will 
be  found  ultimately  fighting  on  God's  side  against  the 
transgressor.  The  stones  of  the  field  are,  as  said  the 
patriarch,  in  league  with  the  righteous  ;  the  stars  in  their 
courses  fought  against  an  unrighteous  Sisera.  It  is  not 
peace  with  God  that  is  to  be  bought  by  flattering  ignor- 
ant prejudices  or  exasperating  intemperate  appetites  in 
the  people.  The  unanimity  that  demanded  the  Crucifix- 
ion of  the  Nazarene,  was,  unconsciously  but  most  effectu- 
ally, a  vociferous  summons  for  the  battering  ram  of  Titus 
against  the  gates  it  proposed  to  guard,  and  for  the  torch 
of  Titus  against  the  fane  it  assumed  to  purify  by  shedding 
the  innocent  blood.  Not  in  impenitence  and  defiance,  but 
in  the  discernment  of  error  and  the  reformation  of  wrong 
lies  God's  path  toward  peace.  So  John  the  Baptist,  the 
forerunner  of  Christ,  dealt  with  the  Hebrew  people,  and 
Herod  their  prince.  Repentance  was  the  prerequisite  to 
set  them  in  the  way  of  God's  favor.  And  wlien  Christ 
himself,  the  very  Prince  of  Peace,  came  down  to  preach 
peace  and  to  give  peace,  it  was  by  proclaiming  with  His 
own  lips  as  had  His  forerunner  done,  repentance  as  the 
preparation  for  the  kingdom  of  Heaven.    The  law  of 


ITi=   oOURCE,   ITS   CHANNEL?,   AND   ITS   RESULTS.         21 

God  was  to  be  honored  and  conserved,  that  grace  might 
go  forth.  The  light  of  a  recoA'cred  paradise  shone  only 
over  the  Gethsemane  of  unutterable  anguish,  and  the 
Calvary  of  ignominy  and  agony  where  the  Deliverer  mag- 
nified and  made  honorable  the  law  that  He  satisfied. 
Our  great  cities  are  in  need,  for  a  republic  to  be  pos- 
sible— in  need  of  a  more  perfect  evangelization.  Can 
drunkenness,  ignorance,  venality  and  judicial  partisanship 
give  righteousness  to  the  cause  they  sustain,  or  freedom 
to  the  state  which  they  rule  ?  Legislators  and  magis- 
trates who  shall  reign  mainly  by  the  permission  of  an 
incensed  Providence,  and  by  the  grace  of  the  Five  Points 
politically  strong  only  in  the  recklessness,  error,  and 
riot  which  they  flattered  and  sheltered  and  represented, 
would,  by  the  sure  retributions  of  Heaven,  become  rulers 
likely  to  reverse  the  Scriptural  blessing,  and  prove,  in- 
stead, "  A  terror  unto  them  that  do  well,  and  a  praise 
and  a  reward  unto  them  that  do  evil."  For,  by  the 
will  of  the  Sovereign  of  the  Universe,  righteousness  fail- 
ing, true  peace  fails  ;  and  the  false  peace,  compounded 
by  the  evil  doer,  persistent  in  his  wrong,  evokes  the 
thunderbolt  and  hurries  down  the  tempest. 

HI.  But  blessed,  and  beneficent  and  permanent  are  the 
RESULTS  of  that  acquiescence  in  God's  will,  and  that  ac- 
ceptance of  God's  guidance  and  grace,  which  follow  in 
the  train  of  the  Spirit's  renovating  work.  "  Tlie  effect 
of  righteousness  shall  be  quietness  and  assurance  for- 
ever." Come  personally  to  God  in  true  conversion  ;  and 
obtain  the  possession  of  true  holiness  from  the  Spirit's 
teachings  ;  and  the  sequence  is  for  this  passing  life  and 
for  the  world  beyond  this,  a  quietness  and  assurance  that 
are  forever,  for  the  Unchanging  and  Holy  God  bestows 
them,  and  the  Eternal  God  guaranties  them.  And  the  re- 
pose, welling  from  renewed  hearts,  over  reformed  nation-^- 


22  NATIONAL  renovation: 

ind  throughout  an  evangelized  planet,  as  it  is  fed  from  the 
depths  of  the  Infinite  Spirit,  is  a  well,  as  Christ  pledged 
it,  "  springing  up  into  life  everlasting  ; "  and  becomes  as 
the  prophet  saw  it,  a  great  river  going  out  to  flood  the 
earth.  The  peace  that  has  Omnipotence  as  the  ally,  and 
Christ  formed  in  the  heart  as  the  hope  of  endless  glory, 
is  a  peace  not  of  the  world's  giving,  and  also  beyond  the 
world's  power  to  destroy.  It  is  so  in  the  concerns  of  na- 
tions and  the  entire  race.  The  Greek  asked  but  a  rest, 
and  boasted  then  that  he  could,  were  but  a  pivot  furnished 
him,  lift  the  world.  The  Spirit  and  Son  of  God,  in  the 
Incarnation  and  Atonement,  have  provided  a  support,  on 
which  rests  and  from  which  plays  the  great  lever  of  Re- 
generation and  Redemption,  upheaving  our  nature  out  of 
the  quarry  of  the  Fall  to  build  men  into  the  walls  of  the 
New  Jerusalem.  Heaven  has,  in  its  Christ,  come  down 
that  Earth  may,  in  the  person  of  Christ's  Church,  be  al- 
lowed to  mount  on  high.  The  victory  that  overcometh 
the  world  in  us,  and  the  victory  that  is  morally  to  swing 
the  world  out  of  the  sides  of  Tophet  is  our  Faith — a 
Faith  in  this  the  only  Christ — a  Faith  of  the  operation 
of  this  the  Spirit  of  God. 

In  vain,  then,  do  men  profess  to  love  peace,  if  they  at 
the  same  time  hate  righteousness,  which  is,  in  G  od's  ap- 
pointment, the  only  architect  of  an  abiding  peace.  They 
seek,  as  said  Augustine,  a  good  they  cannot  find,  because 
they  seek  it  not  in  the  right  quarter  and  from  the  only 
source.  For  to  shuffle  off"  Duty,  and  to  stop  the  ears  at 
the  cry  of  Misery,  and  to  secure  Luxury  and  to  practice 
Oppression,  are  but  seeking  peace  in  quarters  Avhcre  by 
tlie  edict  of  the  Almighty  "  there  is  no  peace."  But  in 
the  Spirit  of  God,  the  Teacher  of  righteousness  and  the 
Unfolder  of  duty,  giving  not  only  the  right  precept,  but 
ingrafting  the  high  motive,  not  merely  inscribing  the  law 


ITS  SOURCE,   ITS   CHANNELS,   AND   ITS   RESULTS.        23 


but  instilling  the  love  of  the  law,  will  the  race  find  the 
Bringer  of  Liberty,  and  the  Guardian  of  Order,  and  the 
Sealer  of  peace.  Let  the  young  bring  to  Him  the  order- 
ing of  their  busy  career  ;  and  on  Him  let  1  he  aged  cast 
the  weight  of  their  anxious  forebodings.  Let  the  patriot, 
and  the  reformer,  and  the  parent,  teacher,  pastor  and 
evangelist,  in  all  their  labors  for  the  souls  of  men,  begin 
by  imbathing  their  own  souls  in  this  higher  atmosphere  of 
hope,  and  serene  trust,  and  limitless  life.  Then  the  world 
shall  neither  fusciiialc  nor  daunt.  The  faith  in  an  Invisible 
but  Almighty  Helper,  that  of  old  marched  past  scaffolds 
and  dungeons  and  martyr  fires  and  catacombs,  gathering 
hundreds  of  its  meek  witnesses  ;  nor  swerved  from  its 
steady  advance  until  it  ruled  the  wide  realm  of  those  Cas- 
sars,  who  had  wielded  against  that  faith  all.  and  vainly 
wielded  all  these  impediments, — is,  in  the  might  and  right 
of  its  old  and  unworn  Leader  to  stalk  over  wider  fields  of 
contention,  and  quell  a  more  thronged  and  multiform  op- 
position ;  for  it  has  the  world  as  its  covenanted  dominion. 
Up  with  the  banner  of  Truth,  and  in  the  name  of  the 
Lord  plant  it.  Up  with  the  rallying  cry  of  intercession 
to  the  Hearer  of  Prayer,  with  whom  is  held  in  reserve 
the  full  aad  adequate  "  residue  of  the  Spirit."  Let  us  im- 
plore His  descent  on  the  camp  and  the  fleet  and  the  cab- 
inet— on  the  sorrows  of  the  bereaved  and  the  exiled  and 
the  impoverished,  on  the  master  and  the  slave,  on  the 
North  and  the  South,  on  the  Church  and  on  the  world. 
Blessed,  has  this  true  Spirit  of  God  said,  in  connexion 
with  the  prophecy  of  our  text,  are  those  who  send  forth 
to  all  waters  the  feet  of  the  ox  and  the  ass.  The  imag- 
ery seems  to  describe  the  regular  and  the  irregular  laborer 
— the  professional  and  the  unprofessional  testimony  for 
Christ  and  His  truth,  and  His  cause,  as  being  far  more 
largely  diffused  than  as  yet  they  have  been  beside  all  the 


24  NATIONAL  RENOVATION. 

great  channels  of  intercourse  and  influence.  The  prom- 
ise assures  to  such  wide  dispersion  as  wide  a  benediction. 
Battle  and  Revolution,  in  all  their  tremendous  severity, 
are  yet  in  God's  unfaltering  hand,  clearing  broad  water 
courses  that  the  more  promptly  and  liberally  they  be 
morally  tilled,  will  the  sooner  roll  their  floods  of  healing 
where  at  first  ran  but  their  currents  of  submerging  deso- 
lation. Prayer  is  to  feed  missions  ;  and  missions  are 
needed  to  warrant  sincerity,  constancy  and  filial  confi- 
dence in  the  offering  of  our  prayer.  And  to  us,  as  a 
nation,  the  downward  rush  of  the  Holy  Ghost  shall  be 
the  era  of  a  genuine  righteousness,  an  abiding  concord, 
and  an  indestructible  freedom. 


RECENT   PAMPHLETS, 


How  a  Free  People  Conduct  a  Long  War. 

A    Chapter   from    English    History.      By  Charles  J.  Stills. 
8vo.     Paper,  15  cents. 

"  We  trust  that  this  pamphlet  may  be  very  widely  read.  It  is  a  most  timely 
utterance,  and  we  are  sure,  that  wherever  it  is  read  it  will  infuse  new  courage 
and  hope  into  loyal  hearts.  It  shows  tliat  the  scenes  through  which  we  are 
passing,  the  state  of  public  feeling  toward  the  government,  the  disputes  in 
reference  to  public  men  and  public  measures,  have  nothing  in  them  at  all  strange 
or  unusual,  but  are  in  fact  the  almost  universal  and  inevitable  accompaniment 
of  long  wars — wars  which  in  the  end  are  entirely  successful.  The  writer  illus- 
trates the  whole  by  an  ext('n4ed  reference  to  what  took  place  in  the  Peninsular 
"War,  under  the  leadership  of  Wellington." 


The  American  AYar. 

A  Lecture   delivered    in    London,  October,    1SG2.      By    Rev. 
Newman  Hall,  D.  D.      15  cents. 


Report  of  Louis  H.  Steiner,  M.  D., 


Inspector  of  the  Sanitary  Commission.  Containing  a  Diary 
kept  during  the  Rebel  Occupation  of  Frederick,  Md.,  during 
the  Campaign  in  Maryland,  September,  1802.  8vo.  Paper, 
15  cents. 


Published  by 

ANSON  D.  F.  RANDOLPH, 

^^J^   The  above  lu'dl  he  sent  hy  Mail  prepaid,  on   the  receipt  of 
the  price  in  postarie  stamps. 


Manufaclured  by 

GAYLORD  BROS.  »ne. 

Syracuse,  N.  Y. 

Stockton,  Calif. 


M287970 


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